THE time-honoured excuse for disruption from our often incompetent, much-knackered Stone Age rail network, spoke of “the wrong sort of snow” or “leaves on the line”.

Until this week, when a 24-hour burst of hot weather, said by the Met Office to constitute a heatwave, slowed trains by threatening to melt overhead cables with “the wrong kind of sun”.

Yet another mind-boggling challenge for the operators.

Or could this be a clever decoy to detracted from re-emerging statistics which show that our rail fares are between four and seven times more expensive than their European counterparts?

While we may be in the midst of the “silly season”, this week’s figures merely echo those first listed a full two years ago, which said UK rail costs should be 30% lower, and nationwide fares “more equitable”.

Still nothing has been done. Fares have gone from ultra-expensive to silly.

Shouldn’t rail union boss Bob ‘Jurassic’ Crow be concerning himself more with the wholesale plight of commuters, instead of grand-standing in weekly petty squabbles on the London Tube?